Introduction: 4x4x4 LED-cube Based Arduino and Flower Protoboard

By elecfreaks
About: ElecFreaks is an open design house founded in March 2011. Our goal is to create rapid prototypes and give small-batch manufacture solution for makers and startups. With over 50% staff as engineers and expanded…
This instructable will teach you how to build your 4x4x4 LED cube with Flower ProtoBoard and control by Arduino. Why is Flower ProtoBoard ? not ProtoBoard ?

Because of I often use protoboards to test out if a new idea works in practice. I do not use breadboards anymore because I pretty much use only smd parts and I hate the connection problems and high parasitics that breadboards have.

So the Flower ProtoBoard was born.  You can solder SMT component. Include 0402, 0603, 0805，SOT-23 and so on. Especially the issue with the longer solder "wires".

At this LED Cube project you will see the ProtoBard point-to-point wiring is very clear.




The Flower ProtoBoard from ElecFreaks is receiving  request sample on December 2011.

Encourage guys who are experienced engineer or with extensive soldering experience, and willing to write a test comment for us. Welcome to request for free product samples. Please send you request to :  services@elecfreaks.com
Request Sample Format:

—· Willing to write a test report or comment for flower ProtoBoard.  You can post on yourself Blog or electronics enthusiast Form, please send the post link to us. Of course you also could feedback your report to us or within the post. Any suggestion to improve the Flower ProtoBoard Series is Welcome.

—· Contact person and phone number

—· Shipping address



More infor here:      

More idea for Flower ProtoBoard ??                         http://www.elecfreaks.com/2423.html

Flower ProtoBoard Evolutionary History                   http://www.elecfreaks.com/2362.html  

ProtoBoard Revolution – Flower ProtoBoard           http://www.elecfreaks.com/2303.html



Step 1: Step 1 You Will Need:

TOOLS
*soldering iron
*pliers
*small screwdriver
*tweezer
*solder
*Empty plastic bottles or anything you can drill some holes and fix led
*pencil
*ruler
*computer with Arduino software
*USB-cable
*snips

PARTS
*64 pcs led’s
*16 pcs 1k resistors(0603) that go with the LED’s
*Freaduino MEGA2560 or Arduino MEGA2560
*ElecFreaks Flower V2.2 protoboard

SOFTWARE
*DEMO 1 ： FV8XM2MGGPEXFII.zip （The video display）
*DEMO 2 ： FWSTA8ZGSUT1S5W.zip

Note: the demo code LEDPin and LayerPin need change your Arduino IO. Here we define as below:

// Initalize our LED columns (positive)
int LEDPin[] = {6,5,24,26,28,30,32,34,36,38,40,42,44,46,48,50};
// Initalize the LED layers (ground)
int LayerPin[] = {10,11,12,13};

Step 2: Step 2 Drill the Fixed Holes

Draw on the bottle a grid with the lines 10.16 mm apart. (Because you will fix the led onto protoboard at the end, so you must fit for the protoboard holes distance.

Our Flower protoboard hole distance is 2.54mm, 4×2.54mm=10.16mm ) Draw 4 lines horizontally and 4 lines vertically. Then use tweezer or other sharp tools drill holes.

Step 3: Step 3 Bending the Legs of the Led

As the picture shown, the longer pin is the cathode. Bending the legs accord with the arrow.

Step 4: Step 4 Placeing the LED and Solder Them

Each cathode of LED  is soldered  together. Make sure that you don’t solder an anode to an cathode.


Step 5: Step5 Soldering the 4 Layer LED

This step is a little difficult. You’d better  place the LED as the direction shown on the picture then solder each layer together(solder the anode of different layer together. We call it column. Each column need a IO to control.).  In this way, you will easy to solder the column in the middle.

Step 6: Step6 Fixing the LED Cube Onto the Flower Protoboard.

Each anode is a column. A B C D is the cathode of each layer. So we need 16+4=20 IOs to control the 4X4X4 LED cube.

Step 7: Step7 Wiring on Flower Protoboard.

You can easy to wire on our Flower protoboard. Red square in the picture is 1k 0603 resistors.

Step 8: Step 8 Starting Play

Now you have completed the entire  process. Next you need to put it into the freaduino, and download the code.Before you start to paly it. We should briefly explain how does the LED cube work. The schematic of LED cube is very simple.

The LED cube 4x4x4 has a total of 16 transistors are used to switch on the Led columns and then another total of 4 lines to switch on or off the ground layer. So a total of 16+4 = 20 lines are needed to make the LED cube 4x4x4 work. It is important that the 4 ground layers are switched bwteen them to stwich one layer at a time and the swicthe the desired led’s on the partucular layer.

I believe you already have enough  understanding of  4X4X4 LED cube.

Now please enjoy it.